Check out the 2012 schedule. Hope to see you out there!

He is trying to win one of the Champion “Search for a Champion” sponsorships. Please check out his video and give him a vote. You can vote every day until the contest ends.

Contest details

Sunday morning (race day) we awoke to some rain. All of the practice sessions were wet and I chose to sit them out because it looked like it was going to be dry for my races. The first couple of races were somewhat intermediate conditions, but it ended up drying out by the time my race (F4 Expert) started.

In the first heat I had a great battle with one of the kids from NJ Mini GP and ended up besting him for a 6th place. In heat 2, I was able to get some work done and finish 5th place, taking 5th overall for my class.

The highlight of Sunday was thanks to the Race Tech front end upgrades. I was able to shave 4.5 seconds off my best time from last year! My goal for the weekend was to go sub 1:20 and I ended up in the 1:18s. If you have ever considered upgrading the front end on your NSR, do it. It is well worth it.

Thanks also goes out to my other sponsors: Lenny & Larry’s, Polar, and INS Robotics

Don’t forget to check out the team video:

Doghouse Team Video from VMD

See you in about a month down at Circleville.

Vintage Motorcycle Days 2001 at Mid-Ohio in Lexington, OH was a great time, as usual. It’s great to see everybody that you haven’t seen since last year and hang out at the track.  The whole riding and racing part isn’t too bad either.

This year the weather played a big part in the weekend events. For the Formula GP Lightweight race on Saturday, the conditions were a little mixed. It was raining just a little bit, but not really enough to mount rain tires. So all of us on 125s headed out on slick tires. Just in case you have never been on Mid-Ohio before, the surface is super grippy in the dry (To the point of shredding tires) and incredibly slick in spots when there is the slightest bit of moisture.

In Saturday’s race, I watched three people crash in the keyhole on the first lap. That’s when I realized that it was going to be a little touch-and-go. I rode my race and pushed as hard as I thought possible for the conditions and ended up in second place. I’ll take it on a day like this.

Fortunately, Sunday was dry for the race. I didn’t get a very good start and ended up third off the line. I was relegated to 4th place pretty quickly and fought back to finish 0.5 seconds off the final podium position.

All told, it was a good weekend for me. And a big thanks to my sponsors: Lenny & Larry’s, Polar, Race Tech, and INS Robotics.

-The Captain

Podium shot - Both Saturday and Sunday podium finishers (4/5 out of our garage)

Setting up for Turn 1

Sunday race start

Mantis takin' care of business

]]> http://www.doghousegpracing.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=517 0 http://www.doghousegpracing.com/blog/?p=491 http://www.doghousegpracing.com/blog/?p=491#comments Thu, 30 Jun 2011 02:19:27 +0000 The Captain http://www.doghousegpracing.com/blog/?p=491 First off, I would like to thank my sponsors for all of their support. Thanks to Lenny & Larry’s, Polar, and Race-Tech. Well folks, we were at scenic Road America in Elkhart Lake a few weeks ago for the AHRMA … Continue reading →]]> First off, I would like to thank my sponsors for all of their support. Thanks to Lenny & Larry’s, Polar, and Race-Tech.

Well folks, we were at scenic Road America in Elkhart Lake a few weeks ago for the AHRMA races and it was quite an interesting weekend. Friday practice was somewhat damp with a sort of haze hanging in the air all day long. Droplets would easily form and run on your windscreen and face shield. All of us on 125s were running slicks. During the fourth session, the moisture picked up a little bit and 3 guys on 125s went for a tumble, a little too much moisture for slicks I guess. Looking back on it, we were probably pushing the conditions a little bit.

Saturday was dry, but humid. I got a really crappy start in the race. I managed to work my way up to 5th place, with 3rd and 4th only a few seconds ahead. The race was stopped short by a red flag, so I finished in 5th place.

During Sunday morning practice, my motor started sounding weird. I came in and did some investigation and found that the ring had gotten off of the locating pin and snagged a port. Not good. The end of the ring broke off and started bouncing around between the piston and the cylinder head. At this point there was about 150 miles on this top end. I was testing out the Wossner pistons and this was the first failure.

During the break I cleaned up the cylinder, fit a different head and put in a new piston. The break in for this piston was the out lap for the race on Sunday. During the race, the bike was noticeably down on power. Three turns from the finish, the motor ceased.

This was a very frustrating day for me because I took all of the precaution that I thought necessary to run the forged aftermarket pistons and had two failures. My stuff has always been reliable. Back to HRC for me.

The carnage:

I have never felt better during or after a race weekend. No fatigue and no soreness. A HUGE thanks goes out to Lenny & Larry’s for the support!

We will be practicing on Friday, with races on Saturday and Sunday. There should be a good turnout of 125s and we hope to see you there!!

Please see the event flier here – Road_America_2011

For the springs, you can go two ways. One way is to purchase a spring set in the correct rate for your weight and the other is to send your stock springs to be modified. If you go with the second route, do yourself a favor and measure the free length of your springs before you send them out. This will make the determination of the new preload spacer length easy when you get your springs back. For your new spacer length, just duplicate the overall free length of the original spring plus any spacers. The new spacer setup should account for the Gold Valves when they are installed.

The damping rod needs to be removed and modified for this upgrade. On the smaller NSR forks you need to drill out the existing compression damping holes and add a few more holes. The instructions included with the product are pretty explicit on this point. Before installing the damping rods I would recommend running the bolt or a tap in and out of its’ threaded hole a few times. This will help to clear any debris from drilling and will make the installation easier as you will likely not need to use too much force to keep the damping rod from spinning while tightening the bolt.

The preload setting of the Gold Valve spring also needs to be set before installation. For racing, the recommendation is 4 turns of preload. Set this by first backing off the tension all the way. Tighten until you just make contact with the spring and then go 4 turns.

Install the damping rod (with top out spring) and Gold Valve before setting the fork oil level. In the case of this upgrade, the weight of the fork oil will affect the rebound damping. I used 20W oil. In my case, the oil level was different from the stock setting. I set mine to 120mm – we’ll see how that works. The level should be set with the inner tube all the way down or fully compressed. I don’t know if it is necessary, but I pump the fork multiple times to get the air out before measuring.

I am really excited to see what kind of handling improvement this setup gives me.

Thanks again Race Tech!

Gold Valve.

Original bits.

Stock damping rod.

Modified damping rod with Gold Valve.

New bits.

Ready to rock.

Polar hooked me up with a sweet deal on this FT40 model training computer.  This thing has really helped me step up my training. Seeing the calories burned during a workout is really motivating. It’s also a good tool to make sure that I am not training too hard. If you are looking for something to help with your training, invest your money in a training computer.